Category Archives: Weather & Sky

Keep the Rain Out of the Drain


It rained again last night. And yesterday. And last week.

This year’s rainfall is already 4.38″ above normal; 67% more than we usually get.  All the excess rain fell since February 1.

This has caused flooding, though nothing extraordinary for Pittsburgh in the spring, and a less publicized problem called combined sewer overflow.

Prior to the 1940’s the older towns in Allegheny County built their sewage collection systems to do two things at once:  carry rainwater off the streets (storm sewers) and collect sewage (sanitary sewers).  It was cheap to build combined sewers because they only require one pipe.  There was no law against building new systems this way until the 1940’s when we could no longer tolerate the problem it caused.

The problem is that when it rains too much the sewage treatment plants cannot handle the inflow of rain+sewage so the excess goes directly into the river.  As little as 1/4-inch of rain can cause a combined sewer overflow in Allegheny County.

Fixing this problem will cost billions of dollars, but fix it we must.  Allegheny County is under a consent decree that requires us to finalize a plan by 2012 and fix the problem by 2026.  (It’s about time we did!   Click here for a very interesting history of river use and water treatment in the Pittsburgh area.)

Meanwhile there’s something each of us in Allegheny County can do to prevent rainwater from overflowing the sewers.  Last year the county changed the plumbing laws so that we’re allowed to unhook our downspouts from the sewer system and install rain barrels or rain gardens to prevent the rain from going down the drain.

You can learn how to do this at a seminar at noon next Wednesday, March 23, at Schenley Park Visitors’ Center called Keep the Rain Out of the Drain.  Click here to for more information and to let them know you’d like to attend.

Every little bit helps.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original.)

False Advertising!


Only four days ago we had clear skies and 66o

Spring was here, I shed my coat and took a long walk, enjoying the new season, making plans for spring activities.  Oh, how happy!

Four days ago the weather forecast said it would be colder today but it didn’t sound bad.  Then yesterday morning the weatherman predicted 2″-4″ of snow.  By afternoon he’d changed his mind and was calling for 3″-5″ starting at 6:00pm.

Instead the snow started at 4:00pm and fell heavily, snarling rush hour traffic.  I didn’t have my snow boots on (it was spring, wasn’t it?) and I didn’t want to walk far, so I waited for the bus that stops 300 feet from my house.

It never came.  After 50 minutes I took the bus that stops a half mile from my house.  Grrrr!

Our official snow total is 8.4″ at the airport.  As you can see, there are 8 inches in my back yard.

I’d have nothing to gripe about if there hadn’t been so much false advertising.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Snowing Today


After last weekend’s thaw we’ve returned to the amount of snow we had before it rained — about an inch or two on the ground in Pittsburgh — with another inch+ expected today.

North of I-80 it’s another story.  By Wednesday the Pymatuning area already had an inch of fluffy stuff but now they’re expecting 2-4 inches of snow today, 3-5 more inches tonight and an additional 1-3 inches on Sunday. 

I was going to go birding at Pymatuning tomorrow but that news changed my mind!

So I’m keeping my feeders filled and hoping for a pretty scene like this one. 

A little snow is OK.

(photo by Steve Gosser)

Sun and Moon Tomorrow


Tomorrow will be jam-packed with astronomical events, but you’ll miss the first one if I don’t tell you now.

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning — at 3:15am Eastern Standard Time (EST) on December 21, to be exact — the last full moon of 2010 will reach its fullest.  Two minutes later it will turn blood red.

That’s because there will be a full lunar eclipse tonight that will reach totality at 3:17am.  The eclipse will start 27 minutes after midnight (00:27am on 12/21) and end at 6:06am EST.  When the moon is completely eclipsed it usually turns red.  This will be visible across all of North America (where there isn’t cloud cover).

The second event is the winter solstice, the moment when the sun “stands still” at its farthest point south for the year.  Though this is far less dramatic you can think of it when it occurs at 6:38pm EST.

So if the sky is clear tonight, go to bed early so you can get up to watch the moon.

Don’t worry.  You can afford to lose sleep.  Tomorrow will be a very short day.  😉

(photo from Wikimedia Commons)

p.s. Here’s Chuck Tague’s blog about it.

Tracks!


One of the best things about snow is that you can see who’s been there before you and guess what they were doing. 

Last weekend at Moraine State Park I was pleased by the tracks in the snow.  My favorites were made by a red fox who walked at least a mile on the North Shore bike trail.  For the most part he just put one foot front of the other, literally placing each back foot in the print of his front foot like a cat.  On and on he walked until…  

Something caught his eye and he broke into a gallop.  He rushed at a pine tree with squirrel tracks at its base but his prey must have escaped.  No blood, no struggle in the snow, and the fox resumed his walk with only one backward glance as if nothing had happened.

Behind him came a coyote who walked only a short section of the bike trail, then veered off to a thicket for some serious hunting.  His prints showed him sniffing in all the corners, then digging near a culvert.  Something edible must have been hiding there.  I saw rabbit and vole tracks but were they what he was after?  I don’t know.

Birds make tracks, too.  Shown above are the tracks of a wild turkey walking alone in the snow.  It would have been fun to find out where he went and if any other turkeys joined him.

So despite the cold I’m not tired of the snow (yet).  I’m out looking for tracks!

(photo by Tim Engleman of Saxonburg, PA via Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original.)

Crabapples and Rain

Thank you, everyone, for your comments, emails and phone calls about yesterday’s quiz.

My local experts — Marcy Cunkelman, Dianne Machesney and Chuck Tague — agree that the tree is a crabapple.   My photo didn’t provide enough information to identify the cultivar but Marcy suggested a Sargent’s Crabapple, Dianne gave us a list and Chuck Tague emailed this comment:

“Dianne and Marcy are correct.  It is one of the ornamental crabs.  It resembles the trees at Chatham Village in Mt. Washington, Showy Crabapple “Malus floribunda”.  The top of one is close to my second floor office window. It is not a favorite of birds until after the first hard frost.  Then, usually a week or two before Thanksgiving, swarms of fruit-eaters descend on the tree.  American Robins and Cedar Waxwings bounce from crabapple to crabapple in a frenzied feast.  Mixed in are House Finches and House Sparrows.  Eventually a brigade of European Starling swoops in and the fruit is stripped clean in a few hours.”

Chuck sent a photo of a cedar waxwing tossing back a crabapple, but I chose this one of a robin in the rain — on Chuck’s crabapple tree — because it ties two themes together.

Yesterday’s storm and heavy rain reminded me that there’s a link between weather, birds and food.  We might guess that heavy rain puts birds under stress.  Now we have some proof.

Alice Boyle of the University of Western Ontario studies white-ruffed manakins in Costa Rica.  They’re fruit-eating birds the size of chickadees who, like chickadees, must eat all the time and, like chickadees, change elevation in the winter.

Winter in the Costa Rican rain forest isn’t cold but it’s very, very wet.  Alice Boyle and her colleagues discovered that when particularly long, heavy rain storms plagued the area, the white-ruffed manakins migrated to lower elevations.  Blood tests of rain-affected birds showed they had high levels of stress hormones and were burning fat.  In other words, they were hungry and stressed out.

Boyle says that the stress of rain may be what prompts the birds to fly downhill to drier ground, “These rainstorms have really strong effects, both behaviorally and physiologically, in ways that nobody knew before.”

Her study might not translate to all birds, but it supports our guess that rain means stress.

Read the article and see a picture of the white-ruffed manakin here.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Through the Cracks

Crack in the wall at Willowbank (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

9 October 2010

I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing way too much Nature indoors lately.

Yesterday’s suddenly warm weather heated up the bugs and they came inside.  Fortunately I’ve not seen what I consider “too many” of these critters:

  • Brown marmorated stink bugs:  After a brief hiatus (when it was raining) the parade of stink bugs distracted us at work yesterday.  Despite their large appearance stink bugs can flatten themselves into a narrow profile and drag their large shielded backs through tiny slits.  I’ve actually seen one emerge through the crack under my office window.  Eeeeewwww!
  • House centipedes:  At home we have had all sizes of house centipedes though thankfully not in great numbers.  I really hate them because their fast-moving legs give me the creeps.  My cat points them out by watching and waiting to pounce.  Get them, Emmy!  (p.s. See Steve-o’s comment below about what centipedes eat.  Maybe I should let them live.)
  • Common house spiders:  Their cobwebs are in nooks and crannies around the house where I had hoped they’d capture the stink bugs and centipedes.  Unfortunately these spiders are too small to tackle such large insects.  Some webs have no spiders; Emmy eats them.  Even the empty webs perform a useful function:  When you want to seal your leaking heating ducts, look for cobwebs nearby.  Spiders always build where there’s moving air.

And here’s what I haven’t seen yet — and hope to avoid:

  • Asian lady beetles:  Though beneficial these bugs are annoying in large numbers.  I haven’t seen them inside yet but their favorite invasion month is October.  Alas, they’re bound to come.
  • Mice:  In the fall of 2001, I discovered I had mice when my indoor cats gave me presents:  a white-footed mouse and a house mouse.  Where there’s one mouse there’s always more, and where there are two species the house is a sieve.  I stopped them by cementing all the outdoor cracks around the foundation.  Well worth the effort, though my cats were disappointed.

The parade of indoor Nature is underway.   Now’s the time to seal the cracks.

(photo by Achim Hering from Wikimedia Commons)

p.s. Emmy has many names including Emmalina.

Drought Warning


Last Thursday the Department of Environmental Protection issued a drought warning for 24 counties in Pennsylvania and a drought watch in the remaining 43.  The entire state is dry but some places are worse than others. 

Here in western Pennsylvania I could see it coming.

Since July we’ve had no rain for weeks at a time, then a day of mere drizzle or a single downpour that ran off the packed, dry dirt.  The ground is rock hard, the plants have shriveled, and some trees have lost their leaves even though it’s only September.  I was wondering when DEP would declare a drought.

A drought warning is more severe than a watch. Highlighted below are the counties in the warning zone.  As you can see, both the bottom left corner and the east central part of the state are in trouble.

In the warning area DEP asks residents to reduce water use voluntarily by 10-15 percent.  We’re urged not to water our lawns, not to take long showers, to check our faucets for leaks and to upgrade our plumbing.

I’m sure DEP told industry to conserve as well.  

I hope the industries that take water without giving it back(*) will stop drawing water until the drought is over.

(Drought photo from Shutterstock)

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(*)  In western Pennsylvania the Marcellus Shale drilling industry is permitted to draw 48.5 million gallons per day from the Ohio watershed.  The water cannot be given back because most of it is lost underground during hydraulic fracturing and the remainder, which cannot be treated yet to safe drinking water levels, is too dangerous to consume.  For a discussion of Marcellus Shale water issues see this paper by a law firm advising the industry, and this news article about the Monongahela River.